Northwards saves lives with ‘Ban the Pan’ Campaign

Fire chiefs say lives have been saved after our ‘ban the pan’
campaign!

We launched a chip pan amnesty in December, asking tenants with chip
pans to contact us if they wanted to swap them for a brand new deep fat
fryer instead.

Our wardens removed the old chip pans and even set up the deep fat fryers, ready for tasty chips. They removed over 130 chip pans from north Manchester homes – and bosses at Greater Manchester Fire Brigade say they’ve helped to save lives.

Last year, 29 people were injured in cooking fires and a number of these were caused by chip pans. As part of the service, the
wardens also checked to see if tenants needed any more help from the fire brigade and passed on the details of those who asked for smoke alarms or any other advice.

It also helped save money – it costs a lot to renovate properties
after serious fires!

Mike Stevens, director of neighbourhood services, said: “We want to do anything we can to reduce the number of fires we have in our homes.

“We initially launched the programme with just 100 deep fat fryers, but it proved really popular, so we extended it. We’re really proud that we’ve been able to make our homes safer and hopefully save lives.”